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Colorado's flood history led to changes

1976. The August storm that dumped more than a foot of rain on Big Thompson Canyon killed 144 people and changed how the state reacted to flood conditions. (Denver Post file)

A car lot is flooded southeast of Greeley near the point where the Cache La Poudre River flows in from the west and joins the South Platte River on June 18, 1965. (Bill Johnson, 1965 Denver Post file photo)

The 1965 flood that devastated Denver remains the most costly natural disaster in terms of property loss in state history. It also prompted the building of Chatfield Dam and changed the face of the city.

In 1976, a storm dumped more than a foot of rain over Big Thompson Canyon and killed 144 people. It led to the establishment of safe areas and warning signs. A 1921 flood on the Arkansas River led to the rebuilding of Pueblo and the rerouting of the river.

Though usually tame, the waterways that tumble across Colorado's rugged terrain have a history of turning deadly. At least three major floods over the past 100 years have left changes large and small in their wake.

It's too soon to say what transformation could follow last week's flooding.

"For a historian to predict the future is kind of like malpractice; we deal with the past, not the future," said B. Erin Cole, assistant state historian. "They say history repeats itself, but it really never does."

A string of menacing funnels materialized over the foothills on June 15, 1965, as a storm, which dumped 14 inches of rain in a little more than three hours, announced its presence with a blizzard of hail.

Jim Hier and a cousin were driving home from a job drilling wells north of Monument Hill. He looked back over his shoulder.

"South of Larkspur, I looked up at the valley where we had been and the whole valley was a lake," said Hier, now 71.

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The deluge began when Plum Creek breached its banks near the Palmer Divide, Cole said. As the water thundered toward Denver, "almost all the tributaries of the South Platte flooded."

Hier, 26 at the time, and two cousins rescued an elderly man from the top floor of his home as the turbulent water was sweeping the house away.

The flood splintered homes and barns, drowned livestock and washed out roads. Debris that included butane storage tanks slammed against bridges, plugging the channels beneath them.

1965. William H. Haines was as mud-spattered as his Huron Street after a flood that, to this point, remains Colorado's most destructive. (Denver Post file)

In Denver, the 15th Street bridge was one of 16 bridges destroyed. Somehow, the 19th Street bridge, built in the late 1880s, stood firm and remains in place, said Tom Noel, a history professor at the University of Colorado Denver

Over two days, the flood spread through 15 counties, inundating 250,000 acres and causing 21 deaths and $540 million ($3.9 billion adjusted for inflation) in damage.

Most of the damage was in Denver, Cole said. "It hit the most densely populated part of the state the hardest," she said.

After the flood, the public clamored for a dam to protect the city, and Chatfield Dam was built.

As the city began to rebuild, some developers wanted to plant single-family homes along the waterway, Cole said. Instead, high rises went up, and over time parks and bike paths turned the once-polluted river into a popular amenity for residents and visitors.

The highest flood-related death toll was likely reached June 3-5, 1921, when torrential rains drenched Pueblo. Railroad cars were swept away, along with entire buildings, and after a fire started in a lumberyard, the raging waters carried burning planks through the city.

"Hundreds of people died, with some death toll estimates as high as 1,500," according to the National Climatic Data Center. "Many of the dead were likely carried far down river and never recovered."

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